The One the Doctor Forgot – Prologue

PROLOGUE

I adore the 10th Doctor and even though Matt Smith is doing an absolutely incredible job, and the show has taken on a much more mature feel, I still find myself longing for the slightly more carefree doctor that was #10. I was a huge fan of the Doctor/Rose relationship and while not completely satisfied with the resolution the writers gave them, it was enough. But I got to thinking. Wouldn’t it be interesting if the tables were turned? What if for once it was the Doctor having his memory and life adjusted and someone else had to bear the burden of remembering for him? So I decided to write a love story of the one the Doctor forgets. This is a whole new character, but she is based during the same time as Rose. Basically, what if it isn’t Rose the Doctor loved but some other?

This story is based after the events of series 1-4, but is based on those series. It’s set after the doctor has died, after he reached his last regeneration and lived to the end of his very long life. My new character is married to the human Doctor. I hadn’t intended for this to be more than just one chapter but the moment I started writing, I knew that somehow there might be at least three chapters.

Hope you enjoy it…

It was so strange to be standing in the TARDIS and to not have him there, his voice floating through the control room as he described planets where they had 5 moons and one made completely from emerald. So strange to have her be so silent and to know that it’s because she grieves for her friend. The fact that I have inherited the TARDIS breaks my heart all over again after I had spent so long rebuilding it, even if I knew this day would one day come. It’s true that for me only a handful of years have passed since the events that lead me to meet, fall in love with, and then be parted from the Doctor. Not long at all, even by human standards. But for him, who knows how much time had passed? Fifty years or 500 years i don’t yet know but from what the TARDIS has managed to tell me so far his final regeneration was reached several years ago and just recently, he finally came to rest. Tears pricked hot behind my eyes and i blinked rapidly to try and stave them off.

I walked around the control hub of the TARDIS, the heart if you like, and took in the changes that had occurred. The Doctor had explained to me once that when a timelord regenerates, so too does his or her TARDIS, almost as if a new man deserves a new car, so to speak. I ran my hands over the controls and smiled. She hadn’t changed too much really; she was still most definitely the TARDIS, but maybe a little sleeker and less ‘put together’ than she had been on my first arrival. She was still ‘sexy’, as he used to like to say, and standing inside her once again, i felt like i had come home. I had missed her, this crazy time and space machine that was bigger on the inside than she was on the outside, that was stuck looking like a police box from the 1960’s and who made a noise that either filled you with relief or devastation. So many adventures i had had with the old girl, together with the doctor and Rose, and at times Mickey. Knowing that she was now mine, that he had bequeathed her to me, touched me more than anything had ever touched me before.

Although my husband told me long ago that after the events of Doomsday, as we called it, he instructed the TARDIS to find me in the event of his death so that i would have some part of him and because he trusted me with her, i had come to believe that due to being stuck in a parallel universe this was an instruction that could never be fulfilled. I was glad to discover i was wrong. It seemed as though the old girl had many skills and ways around frivolous things like rules and physics, and i pet her lovingly. As i hovered near the screen, pausing before beginning the process of discovering what he had gotten up to in the years since we saw one another, i was struck by the realisation that i was now the owner of the TARDIS. Me! A silly Australian girl who met a man in a box while staying with a friend in England. I had never dreamed how my life would change when i went to England several years ago for a working holiday and even saying it like that it sounded so hollow, so boring, so ordinary and domestic. The air rushed out of my lungs and so many emotions swept through me as i allowed all the memories to come flooding back. So much i had repressed, just so i could make it through the day without feeling as though i were sliced in half. It had been years since it cut this keenly, having married my beautiful human Doctor, but no matter how happy i was now, i could never, and would never, erase the years that occurred before.

Swinging the computer screen to a better height, i began the search for the doctor. As events and TARDIS records swept across the screen, i skimmed the information. I smiled at some parts, cried at others, and raged with anger at what life had put the doctor through. How much loss and devastation could one man take? Not much more, i realised as i added up the years the doctor had lived after our parting. To have reached over 900 in 9 lifetimes and to have gone through the remaining few in less than half that time showed a man who had stopped caring, who became reckless and careless, and who had lead a life of solitude, even when surrounded by friends and companions. Tears again pricked hot behind my eyes and i let them come. They flowed down my cheeks as all the grief and long suppressed feelings poured out of me and i sank to the floor. This man had changed my life, this man had given me a new and wonderful life and i remembered every wonderful moment, cherished each one fully, and it was so cruel that he had to forget. You see, this is the real story. Not the story of how i got the TARDIS, not the story of how i came to marry my beloved husband, but the story of how the Doctor forget, to save his life.